


Of Monsters and Men

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Anorexia, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Consent Issues, Eating Disorders, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, M/M, Mental Instability, Multi, Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, War, non tlj compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-01 16:22:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13298646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "There is a tyranny in the womb of every utopia."----Hux is on a killing spree. Poe has a series of bad days. Kylo Ren learns that redemption is a long road through hell and Finn's kindness will save the day. There is not something as black and white. Life is full of colors.----Poe's POV.





	1. Tabula Rasa

He has been back for two years and still is a stranger to you. You used to be friends and now you look at him and only see a ghost of a past you rather would forget.

It is hard to get over what he had done to the galaxy, what he had done to himself. Or rather what has been done to him.

He used to be a quiet child. Thin and pale and withdrawn and too soft and gentle for his own good. You felt protective over him, he was like the little brother you never had. You played together and you shared secrets and pranks and sometimes he even would smile for you.

Sometimes his smile would even reach his dark, sad eyes.

As an adult, he is still quiet and withdrawn and skinny as fuck. Though he is now taller than you, he looks incredible fragile. Like you could snap him in two with a wrong gesture or word.

Sometimes you want to snap him. Sometimes you want to hurt him, want to squeeze his pretty white neck and make him suffer for those bad deeds he has done, for all the lives he took, for all the families he destroyed.

He is a murderer and a victim and everything in between.

Sometimes you want to hold him. Sometimes you want to protect him and tell him that everything is alright.

Sometimes you want neither.

 

* * *

 

 

You visit him sparsely. He is kept in a Resistance cell, hidden away from those who want to harm him. He defected and yet they treat him like a high security prisoner. Keeping him in a room and shackles which repress his force and his connection to the monster who tainted his mind.

He _is_ a high security prisoner after all. Defected or not.

He does not talk. Not to you, not to anyone. You tell him about your day. He rubs his pale, slender, hands together and avoids your gaze. They are raw and look infected. He used to throw himself against the white walls of his cell. He used to scratch his arms, screaming for someone to put him down. He begged for it.

It lasted for a month. The guards grew wary and restrained him, sedated him for weeks. After that he stopped. No more screaming, no more injuring himself. Apparently restrains and drugs scared him more than not dying. Or maybe he just resigned. Gave in.

He has always been a bit of a drama queen.

Looking at his raw hands, you realized that he had replaced self-harm with hand washing; like swapping out cyanide for arsenic. His obsession with cleanliness, now bordering on disorder level. It makes you a little worried about him.

Wrong.

You worry about him a lot. At least sometimes.

The self-harm though is not something you can’t deal with. The voices are worse.

You know about them. The first and last time he told you about them, was before he went to train with Luke. He was scared and anxious and clinging to you, as if his life depended on it, making you promise to kill him whenever he should ever hurt somebody.

He was so scared.

You thought he was making them up, that his strong force sensitivity was messing with his head. Or maybe that he was overworked, even as a teen he was such a kriffing perfectionist, always too hard to himself, always afraid of disappointing those whom he loved.

You were wrong. He wasn’t making them up.

Or at least a bit wrong. You know now, that Snoke had been whispering to him. This time the monster under the bed had been real.

Still is real.

Although his prison cell, should keep Snoke out - Luke Skywalker made sure of it – he still seems to hear him. Or rather hear them.

The voices are still there.

Not that he ever speaks about them. Not to you. But you hear him talk to them sometimes. When he thinks he is alone.

A never-ending monologue. A perpetuum mobile of one-sided conversations.

You know he is frightened. You can see it in his eyes. He has that haunted look - the one he used to have as a child, a teen. Like someone is chasing him. You can see it in his movements which are hesitant and shaky. You can see it in his quivering hands, which he tries to hide in his heavy grey robes.

His whole life he is living in fear. It is only fear that he has.

The voices tell him, that he is a nuisance, that he is fucked-up, that he destroys everything he touches, that he is weak and disgusting and a murder and that the blood on his hands will never go away. That he made his choice and that there is no going back. They tell him that Rey is a far better child than he could ever be and that his mother should have gotten rid of him, when she had the chance. His parents never wanted him anyway. His uncles hate him. He is a mistake, which should have been terminated before he had been able to take his first breath. He is alive though - and now the whole galaxy has to suffer for that.

When you look at his starving form, you feel sick and don’t tell anyone about them.

 

* * *

 

He continues to talk to them.

The weeks pass and he still does not talk to you. Not really.

Your visits increase and he seems to fade.

He does not eat. At least not in your presence. No matter what threats you bring with you.

You remember he used to have a bit of a sweet tooth. He would rarely indulge in it but he used to love all kind of sweets and pastries, especially those your dad made you, during those summers, you spend together, when his smile was sad but still genuine and you thought your friendship would never end.

Now your parents are death and you probably won’t ever see his smile again.

 

* * *

 

 

You talk nonsense during your visits. You tell him about the latest gossip and about the holo you last watched, about the General – his mother -  who excuses herself again because she has another important meeting which prevents her to see her only child and he looks at the cookies, you offer to him, as if they have grown a head or two.

His bony arms stick out of his robes like matches. He used to be imposing in his dark robes, in his dozens of layers and that strange mask. Without the bulk of his robes though, he seems birdlike. His lips lie plush in a thin face; his skin is loose – an odd effect; loose skin, loose flesh on a scrawny body.

He looks like a dying teenager. As if he ever looked differently.

It gets harder and harder to resist the urge to crush him.

He hurts, he hurts so much and you resent him for it.

You eat all the cookies alone and leave and swear not to visit again anytime soon.

 

* * *

 

Despite that he told the General everything he knew about the First Order’s plans, there is no progress in the war against them. Snoke and Hux are still running havoc. Luke and Rey train hard, Finn is on a secret mission. People are dying.

Your friends are dying.

You lost your co-pilot Jessica on a simple rescue mission, her wife cannot stop crying since then. It was your fault, you tried to play hero and she paid with her life. You lost another two of your colleges, of your friends - Lin and Ky - as they tried to protect you during a FO attack on one of the Resistance’s Other Rim posts. Lin leaves five children, Ky a sick mother and a disabled brother who are waiting for him. Rea, an engineer, was sliced up as they FO detected one of the Resistance bases in the Chommell system. She was four months pregnant. You should have been the godfather of her child.

They are death, you are haunted by the light eyes of the young FO officer you had to kill and you have a broken leg (but still are alive) and as the medics release you, you haven’t seen him in weeks.

When you are entering his cell, favouring your right foot, he is leaning against the only window of his prison, looking outside with his quiet indifference. He likes to look at the stars. He used to do that as a child as well.

He always reminds you of a star – nothing more than a beautiful echo of death, a ghost in tangible form, wandering between the death and the living. You suddenly feel a rush of almost painful affection for him, for the person he used to be or maybe even for the person he is now.

You grab him by the collar of his robes as soon as you are close enough and shove him against the glass. You kiss him, crushing into him like a wave. The kiss tastes like the whiskey you consumed earlier and like smoke and desperation. Stale and awful.

He is not kissing back. For a moment, you think he is gonna punch you.

He doesn’t. Instead he is rigid in your arms and you can feel his heart flutter – fast and feeble like some rabbits. You look at his swollen, red lips and remember that he never was interested in that kind of things. Not with you. Not with men, or women, not with anyone.

And suddenly you realize what you were about to do.

As you leave, you can hear him getting sick.

You go back to the bar you came from and hit on a pretty woman with legs miles long and a smile that makes you all flustered. She has wavy hair and white skin and eyes as dark as the night sky. You fuck and make sure to get her consent countable times beforehand.

 

* * *

 

 

When you visit him again, he keeps at least two-foot space between you. His hands are scrubbed bloody. The floor is pristine white. Apparently, it had been cleaned thoroughly. He and his OCD probably appreciate it.

You apologize.

He says nothing. You didn’t expect an answer, that doesn’t stop you from apologizing over and over again.

Whenever you come near him, he flinches.

You want to cry. You do not.

You always were a bit of a drama queen too.

 

* * *

 

You avoid him.

As usual it doesn’t work out well.

The loneliness nearly kills you. One part of your friends is death, the other part is gone, taking up their secret missions and one part is going insane and you still can’t escape the young officer’s eyes. He begged for mercy as you drove the knife in his neck. His face torn in pain, his lips tainted red. He was not even old enough to grow some facial hair. It probably was one of his first missions and it had been his last. You made sure of that.

Your leg is still not functioning properly. You’re on some sort of house arrest, until you recovered fully.

You go out more. You drink more. You meet the women with the night-sky-eyes.

It does not help.

You always thought you fought for the right cause, for freedom and a world without hurt, without death and pain and sorrow, without oppression but apparently there is a tyranny in the womb of every Utopia. You never meant to kill children.

General Hux got hold on the major TV-stations and you can listen to his speeches weekly on nearly every holo in the galaxy. He speaks of justice and order and liberty. He wants a refresh, a tabula rasa, he wants to rewrite history and you wonder if he ever doubts. You wonder if he even believes one thing he says.

Perhaps.

No one is an unjust villain in his own mind. _Especially_ -those who are the worst of us. Some of the most gruesome tyrants in history were motivated by noble motives, or made choices that they would call 'hard but necessary steps' for the greater good.

Maybe Hux can look in the mirror before he goes to bed every night and convince himself he does the right thing, even if it means to build a world on death and misery. You aren’t so sure about yourself anymore.

You used to be a hero, and now you are.. What are you exactly?

 

* * *

 

You go back to his ivory tower and realize you were not his only visitor. Finn has been back, for some time now.

It has been months since you have last seen him but like you avoided _him_ , you also avoided Finn. You don’t know why.

Or you do, but you rather don’t want to admit it.

They sit on the cot in his cell, he is curled up against Finn, avoiding any direct skin to skin contact - looking like something small and lost. He is something small and lost. Finn is reading to him, holo in his hands and a peaceful look on his face.

It is odd to see them together. It is odd and at the same time it is not. They fit together in an awkward way.

White and Dark. Two sides of the same coin. In many ways they are the same, your childhood-friend and Finn and maybe also the young FO officer with the light eyes. Children caught up in a war, they never should have participated in the first place.

And somehow those two children have become friends in the last years. How is that possible? How could you have missed that?

You stand there and watch them and think of the friend you once had. You feel like an outsider, an intruder, so you leave.

You never ask Finn about his visits. He never asks you about yours either. A secret for a secret.

 

* * *

 

The capacity does not do him well. It has been years and he looks more withdrawn and feeble with each passing month; like butter spread too thin on bread. He recently developed a cough, which simply doesn’t vanish and leaves him breathless, choking for air. He has always been a sickly child and there was always a certain melancholy about him. He spent more days in bed than out of it during his childhood and teenage years. You remember visiting him, cheering him up, while his mother was attending important senator visits and his father was god knows where.

You sometimes wondered if it where the force’s doing. If his force is so strong that it tore his mind and body to shreds. Your mother always used to tell you, the price for great power was great suffering.

Now you finally understand what she meant.

 

* * *

 

 

Your leg has healed. Another mission. More dead people. More dead children. A different scenery. But the same uncertainty. The First Order and the Resistance and a sea of blood and as you kill more children clad in Stormtrooper gear the doubt tears you apart. What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, the homeless and the widows, whether the mad demolition is wrought under the name of fascism or in the name of liberty?

You are tired.

As you come back, the Resistance base is flowed with Stormtroopers. It was a trap. Everything was a trap.

You know what they want.

Him.

Always him.

You open his cell and he is cowered in a corner, his face flushed with fever and slick with sweat.

Hux’s attack is a surprise. Apparently, it shows on your face.

He is not surprised at all.

“The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity”, he projects into your mind – he never had done that before, “but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not.”*

He sounds like reciting a scientific paper about the old Empire but you know there is more to his words.

You think of Snoke and what he had done to him. How he took him away and twisted him, broke him until there was nothing left than a puppet, with hollow eyes and hollow cheeks, a dark gaping wound where his heart should be; frightened and terrified, like a pet that has been hit too often. Never able to relax, never knowing when the next punishment would take place; every thought of betrayal nipped in the but, before it could grow to something more.

You reach for him and help him up. His white, bony hand is swallowed by yours, it was like pressing a dead flower in an old-fashioned paper book. He stumbles into you. His legs shaking like a newborn Fathier’s.

You can hear people scream and the echo of a fight.

There was no time.

 

TBC

 

_* The quote is by Christopher Hitchens. In this story though they are Ren’s own words._


	2. Freedom

He has trouble to keep up with you.

It’s not exactly a surprise. The sickness and the lack of physical activity is slowing him down. The cell which he called his home for years now, is hardly a 150 square-metre-apartment on Hosnian Prime. There isn’t much room to keep up his training. Hell, there isn’t much room too even walk around. Not that he ever seemed to be keen to do so.

He should have spent the rest of his life in that cell. He should have died in that cell and now he is free.

A temporary freedom for a not so temporary murderer.

His breathing is laboured and wheezing, as you drag him through masses of panicking people and battles. You have to find Finn, you have to find General Organa. She would keep him safe and after you got rid of your charge you could help protecting the base.

At least you wouldn’t have to protect BB-8, the little droid is with Rey and Luke on Ahch-To. You’re glad for it.

The base is flooded by Stormtroopers and like moths to a flame they’re drawn to you and their former leader, whose wrist feels so brittle in your iron grip.

General Organa’s rooms are located on the other side of the base. If you’re lucky enough you can get there without major injuries.

You kill two Stormtroopers and nearly would have been killed by a FO Officer if it were not for the woman with the night-sky-eyes. She is a hell of a fighter. You thank her with a nod and a smirk, as she kills another two and offers you an escape route, cowering you with her own fire.

You wonder if you would ever see her again.

She never told you her name.

You run through the half-destroyed mess hall when you hear it. It startles you so much that you come to an abrupt stop.

Snoke’s voice is broadcasted over the Resistance base. It’s intensive, animalistic, demanding. It’s cruel, cutting through you like a sharp knife. Now that he can’t invade his apprentice mind directly he came up with other ways to get to him.

He offers you a trade. His former apprentice for the life of your family and friends.

_“Give him to me.”_

The voice sends shiver through your body and you can barely hear his whole speech.

Your charge tenses beside you and you draw him closer. It’s instinct. The need to protect him deep routed inside you since you were little children. He recoils and brings some distance between you, but you still catch a brief hint of his scent – sweet and sickly, just a whisper, and the familiar hunger churns in you before you clamp it down. Not now.

 _“Give him to me”,_ the voice repeats and you wonder if he regrets his decision, if he wants to go back to his master. If he would exchange the Resistance cell for a life in freedom. But even with Snoke he was never free. A rabbit in a cage is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the cage. A prison with invisible walls is still a prison. Freedom like anything else in life is relative.

_“Give him to me.”_

You think about all the lives you could save, and all the lives he took.

It would be only fair.

One life for dozens of others.

You think of him, as he fought against you, dark and devilish, flowing crimson saber drawn; you think of him as he tortured you, invading your mind without a second thought, hiding behind a mask which he used to wear like a second skin. Taking what did not belong to him. It is only right that you take now. It would be easy; without the force he is no match for you.

It’s easy to break an already broken doll.

He could escape the force repressing room, but the force repressing bonds still work; are still tightly wrapped around his wrists, neck and ankles; sparkling in the artificial light like the most expensive jewellery.

It would be so easy.

_“Give him to me.”_

He turns, eyes wide; chapped lips parted.

There is blood on his clammy face; blood from the enemies you killed with your blaster. It draws scarlet flowers across his ivory skin and when he faces you there is nothing left of the Master of the Knights of Ren, of the Jedi Killer, of Snoke’s pet; instead you look in the dark orbs of a boy that isn’t a man yet.

A boy which is terrified. A boy who, you realize, would rather die than go back. A boy wo tried to crush the light by crushing himself. A boy with eyes that once shone kindly, eyes that once held galaxies, eyes that now are full of terror.

The terror shows in his every movement. In his quivering hands, in the tilting of his head as if he were an anxious doe, it shows in the flash of his silvery throat as his lungs struggle to get enough air.

_“Give him to me.”_

You wonder if Han Solo thought the same, as his boy, drove the lightsabre through his chest. You wonder if he pitied him, that child-man, with the soulful eyes, whose life was spent in darkness, in manipulation; whose adolescent years were spent in the company of monsters with human faces in sleek uniforms, marching in lockstep; running after ideals he did not even believe in the first place.

You wonder if he forgave his son in those last moments on the bridge.

You wonder if Han Solo had wished for a different death; wished for a more honorable death, wished to die in battle, protecting those whom he loved.

No. He did die to protect whom he loved.

What does it even matter; no death is ever honorable; it happens to every creature in this kriffing galaxy and does not mean anything beyond that.

Han Solo has given his own life for his child’s.

But you aren’t Han Solo. You wouldn’t spare your former childhood-friends life when it meant you could safe the whole Resistance; could safe your friends, your family. You would crush the child-man’s birdlike china-bones, would tore out that dark bleeding heart, would cut off his head and throw him to the wolves, if it meant to save the ones you love, if it meant to save the last ray of hope which the Resistance represents to the people.

And he knows it.

He closes his eyes and drops his gaze. His eyelashes too dark against skin which drips colour with every harsh breath, with every tortured cough. He welcomes death but he won’t go back.

“Fuck you,” you say and hope that ghastly monster hears you.

Your hand moves on their own will and tightens its grip on his wrist. You can feel the small silver band dig into his delicate skin. Painting marks on vulnerable flesh.

He can’t suppress a small wince. You don’t care and pull him with you almost painfully and then you run.

TBC 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are very much appreciated and keep my going. ;) I would love to hear your thougths.


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